Dry Flies, Dry Flies and a touch of streamers

Visitors and locals alike are experiencing some fantastic
fishing around Jackson Hole. Fishing on the Snake is keep both
experienced and novice anglers busy, with native cutthroat
trout feeding like champions on the surface. In my opinion,
the action, especially with big rubber-leg patterns is the best
I’ve seen in years. Fish of all sizes are coming up and making
anglers (and guides) smile.

Dan  
showing off a cutt

I’ve been busy taking folks fishing, spending days on the
Snake, Green, Flat Creek and Dubois area. It’s always nice
when the toughest decision to make is where to take guests to
fish. We dealt with a rainy few days last week that made
conditions challenging for some, but great for others
(particularly anglers casting streamers at brush piles)! Below
are a few pictures from recent weeks.

Derek getting it done subsurface…

Nice  
Brown Derek!

Flat Creek on the Refuge offers challenging fishing and big
rewards…

Teton  
Fly Fishing on Flat Creek

Everything’s fishing

As we close out July, the fishing around here is red hot. I’ve been busy taking folks fishing on a variety of waters around here in Wyoming. Both the Green and Snake rivers are providing folks with good fishing; smaller waters are also great too. We’ve caught some really nice brown trout down on the Green, mainly fishing subsurface. The Snake’s really turned on too. Dry fly fishing on it with big foam/attractor patterns is the best I’ve seen in a while.

In addition to the float fishing, I also got to get out of town for a few days, taking long-time return client and friend, Andrew, from Houston, TX over to the cabin in Dubois for a few days of fly fishing. We fished some of my favorite waters; getting waaaay off the beaten path, where native Yellowstone Cutthroat trout rose aggressively to various dry flies. The fish weren’t huge, but there were some nice ones and they kept us busy all day long. It was a great few days and nice to over to Dubois.

Andrew showing off a beautiful Yellowstone Cutthroat trout…. 

Andrew with Yellowstone Cutthroat

Off the beaten path…

Fly Fishing near Dubois Wyoming

The upcoming weeks should continue to provide guests with some great fishing. I’m looking forward to more fun days watching clients pound the banks of the Snake with large foam patterns, as well as some more overnight trips to Dubois.

Small water

As some of you know, I have a soft spot for small wild trout streams. The other day I had the pleasure of introducing Ross and his son George to one of my favorites. Streams like this are never featured in magazines or on “current fishing condition” boards at the local shops. They are however as wild a place to fish for trout as you can imagine and full of eager brook trout and cutthroat. Over the course of the day, both anglers enjoyed the small water; catching pan size trout on bushy stimulators. Here’s to the small water and the beautiful trout that inhabit them!

George and Ross working the water with dry flies…

backcountry water

Ross showing off one of his many trout from the day

Ross with brookie

Two happy anglers…

ross and george

Long days and biting fish

After taking some great folks fishing up in Yellowstone last
week, including a fun return client from Texas,  AND providing
my brother and his lovely wife a luxurious comfortable futon for a few
days, I found myself with two free days and a desire to check
on a favorite native cutthroat stream of mine. Jamie joined
me and boy did we have a great day. Long slow pools were full
of eager Snake River Finespotted cutthroat trout. We traded
casts, throwing big, bushy Stimulators and Sofa Pillows to
likely runs and rising trout. All in all a great way to spend a
Monday; capped off with streamside cans of cold Coors.
Today’s another beauty here in Jackson Hole. I’m gearing up
for some guided trips this week into the Shoshone National
Forest with guests. Should be a blast fishing dry flies to wild,
aggressive fish. In the meantime, I got a brisket smoking I
should get back too. Happy 4th to everyone!

Mark celebrates his birthday in style with a Firehole
brown trout. Abundant caddis made for fun fishing and the
Grizzly sighting only added to a fine day on the water!

Mark celebrates on the firehole

Jamie releases a jewel of a cutthroat trout.

Landing one

 

native cutthroat

Jamie hooking up on a nice pool. It seemed every
fish in the stream wanted her fly!

el  
jamie

Firehole River Fly Fishing

It was a good week of fishing around here in Jackson Hole. Several wade fishing trips proved successful despite some colder weather.

I had the pleasure of taking Kevin C. from Chicago up to Yellowstone National Park Thursday and introducing him to the Firehole River. Water clarity and levels are ideal up there and we had a great day hooking acrobatic rainbows and browns (some of which jumped four feet out of the water when hooked!). We started off swinging wetflies, then switched to various PMD patterns to target rising fish. In addition to great fishing, we got to see some of the sights and animals that make Yellowstone famous. A fine way to spend a day on the water and a fine angling job done by Kevin!

A pretty Firehole River brown trout that took a well presented PMD cripple off the surface..

A firehole river brown trout

Kevin showing off one of many trout brought to hand over the course of our day in Yellowstone. Note the steam from the geyser basin..

kevin on the firehole

 

The coming week should be a good one too. Temperatures are warming up again and fishing will continue to be good. Hopefully this warm weather will help get the Green river in shape so I can start taking folks float fishing on the upper Green river. In the meantime, Yellowstone’s not a bad place to be!

Fishing in June sunshine!

It seems like we’ve stumbled into summer around here.
Temperatures in Jackson Hole lately have been around 70 and
daily sunshine is melting away our snowpack. While rivers in
the region remain high, there are certainly plenty of fishy
options.

First evenin’ fish of the summer! This beautiful
brown trout inspected my size 6 Sofa Pillow three times before
deciding to take the tiny Copper John dropper…

a  
spotted beauty

For the next month and a half (well really all
season
), Yellowstone National Park is a great place to
go fly fishing. Waters in the southwestern part of the park
(Firehole, Madison, Lewis, Gibbon, Nez Perce) all fish best this
time of year, providing anglers with good hatches of PMDs and
caddis. The Firehole canyon also gets a salmonfly hatch at the
end of the month. If you’re into casting BIG dry flies, this can
be a fun place to be. Area lakes are also fishing well around
the valley. Most smaller, hike-in lakes below 8,000 feet are
free of ice and crystal clear. These are fun to spend a day at;
pack your lunch, a fly rod and do a little exploring. Jamie and I
hiked into Bearpaw lake in the Tetons the other afternoon.
Fish were active, but so were the mosquitos!

After a long hike in to this fantastic Yellowstone
cutthroat fishery, I found half the lake ice free. Quickly rigging
up a rod, I landed a nice bright cutt. Unfortunately storms
rolled in with high winds, snow and sleet, forcing a hasty
retreat.

Teton  
Fly Fishing in the High Country

The Grizzlies bears are out and about. This guy was
feeding on grass along Togwotee pass..

Grizzly in the Sun

We’re headed out this afternoon to the fishing cabin in
Dubois to get it ready for summer guests. Also planning on
checking some trout waters… More to come…

weekend fly fishing in the Greater Yellowstone region

Had the Pleasure of fishing some folks from neighboring CO this
past weekend. Richard and his wife were treated to some great
Wyoming lake fly fishing, catching rainbow and brown trout on
various leech patterns. It was great to get the drift boat out and
spend all day floating on clear water in warm sunshine! In the
weeks to come, I am looking forward to more great stillwater
fishing in addition to some trips up to Yellowstone National Park
to fly fish. Reports up there indicate that the upper Firehole river
is holding its own. I expect some great dry fly fishing to begin on
it in the next week or so. Also, the Firehole canyon is a great
place to hit the salmon fly hatch in a few weeks. If anyone is
interested in a fun guided fishing trip, give a call or shoot an
email!

What’s inside?

Many know that Lake trout are predatory, feeding on smaller
fish as well as many other things. My unscientific study
confirmed this the other day when I cleaned a Laker for dinner.
It seems this time of year smaller fish and leeches make up a
good portion of their diet. So for all of you getting out this
upcoming weekend to cast at cruising lakers, it might be a good
idea to fish white/blue/olive baitfish patterns and simple leech
patterns…

food

and yes, the grilled Lake trout was delicious

Lake Trout and streamers

Every spring, as area rivers turn brown with runoff,
anglers turn their attention to the many lakes around here in
western Wyoming. As soon as ice comes off and waters
shimmer with hues of turquoise and cobalt, lake trout become
a viable fly rod option.

ice  
off jackson lake

Ice off… Time to target Lake trout at Leek’s
Marina

Today we took a run up to Jackson Lake to see what was
happening. While still having some ice on it, there was quite a
bit of open water too allowing us to fish streamers on sinking
lines from the shore. Fish were caught and we were able to
cast without wearing down jackets (a first this spring!). While it
was exciting landing some good size lake trout, the highlight of
the day was definitely watching a Grizzly bear walk along the
oxbow of the Snake river.

laker

Typical fly rod caught Mackinaw on Jackson
Lake

With warm temperatures making a comeback, many rivers
and streams in the region are becoming unfishable. Fear not
though, if you know where to go, there are plenty of good
fishing options around. In addition to lakes, Yellowstone
National Park will open for the 2014 fishing season next
weekend. If you’re visiting the area and want to fish this or
some other cool trout waters, give me a call.

Big weekend of Fly Fishing

Had the pleasure of fishing with long time friend, Kurt, the
past couple days. After a long hiatus, Kurt managed to sneak
out for a long weekend. We divided time between the Dubois
area and Jackson. While many area waters are blown out due
to spring runoff, we had a few tricks up our sleeve. The best
day by far was on the Bighorn, where Kurt experienced some
fine tailwater fishing. The wind proved challenging on some
other waters, but we managed a few fish here and there,
making the most of our three day fishing adventure.

Here’s Kurt showing off a nice brown he caught just hours
after touching down in Jackson…

Kurt on the lake

Our day on the Bighorn was beautiful. A lot of fish were
caught subsurface, but by late afternoon, fish were rising all
over the river. Kurt decided to hop out of the boat after seeing
several sizeable browns feeding in this eddy.

Wading the Bighorn

Releasing a nice brown

Bighorn release

Rainbow that fell for a grey Ray Charles…

Kurts rainbow

On the drive back to Jackson, we swung up to the oxbow
in hopes of seeing a Grizzly bear that’s been out and about.
Timing is everything, and we got to watch the bear feed
amongst the willows. His tracks were fresh…

on the trail of a grizz

Overall we had a great time and good to get out on the
water and catch up. Hopefully we can do it again next year. In
the meantime, I’m headed down to CO tomorrow to visit
friends and meet the newest member of their clan. Word is
there’s a few feeder streams that are fishing well. We’ll see….